


The End of the Sky

by fadeverb



Series: In Nomine: the Company [2]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:53:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three hundred years ago, two demonlings of Fate decided that their situation would not stand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chaixin has appeared in Leo's series, and Daosheng has been referenced there. But there's no particular need to have read any of those to follow this story.

_The great trees turn lonely and stark  
The sky is dark but the rain does not come  
A heavy frost builds in the middle of the night  
Here’s a willow bough  
In the woods with the pine and the cypress  
The year grows cold; we shall not fail each other._  
\-- Anonymous, “Here’s a Willow Bough: Songs of the Thirteen Months” - trans. Joseph R. Allen

Chaixin had a cubbyhole for herself in the Archives. It was nowhere she was supposed to be, which was why she had it to herself. Demonlings of her size were no longer classified as invasive pests, so long as they knew better than to dog-ear the pages of the books or lay the heavy volumes face-down to mark a place, but some of the guards roaming the stacks would decide otherwise on catching an unformed creature like her outside of its proper place.

The proper place for a demonling not yet demon was somewhere orderly. Filed and sorted, tagged with a designation, watched by the cold multi-faceted eyes of Djinn and their vicious seven-Force assistants. (Nothing in the universe, Chaixin knew, not even vast and powerful demons who might shred a creature for sport, was so vicious as a demon who knew itself to be just _barely_ on that side of the line.) The back of her tunic bore a designation that was not a name, and the same same designation was tattooed across a portion of her arm--it had been more of a tentacle once, when she was small and swept up in one of the nets for processing--and these days a bronze ring clamped around her wrist had the same designation engraved within it. And on the other side, in neat Helltongue glyphs:

_Property of the Archives. Return for a reward._

And yet for all the order of the Archives, call numbers and designations and the labels on the shelves, schedules and rows of desks and those vicious assistants with their long poles with loops on the end, nothing and no one was ever _entirely_ where it ought to be. She had spent more of her life--of the portion that she could remember--placing books in the proper places on shelves than anything, _anything_ else, and yet she had never gone searching for a book at the instruction of her teacher and found it in the place where it ought to be. (If she was lucky, it would be a few to the left or right. Up or down. Filed one digit off on the call number, in the right numerical place in the wrong section, pushed back behind a larger book in the right place. If she was lucky.) And so it raised no particular alarm--no unusual punishment--if now and again a demonling was not seated at her desk during class hours, or linked up with her work team during filing hours, or confined to the appropriate pen during the quiet hours.

Chaixin hated the quiet hours, silent still dark cramped hours and hours and _days_ of breath-held meaningless nothing, even more than she hated the assistants to her teachers. But it was a near thing.

The silence of her cubbyhole was different. It was the silence of _no one is here but me_ and _no one can find me_. She had built the walls out of books, and made pillars of scrolls still in their cases. The rafters were thin slats used to line the edges of shelves, and she’d shingled the place in file folders, the files still within them.

Today she sprawled in her silent private place, and read one of the files from her roof, plucked out at random. An appeal from some demon’s supervisor, a Knight of Theft, on behalf of said demon, to the Game. The forms were filled out sloppily. The included letter veered in tone from obsequiety to belligerence, demanding and begging the return of the arrested demon who had surely, surely done nothing to deserve so much as suspicion. Certainly not arrest. Certainly not...the punishment implied and alluded to, never rendered explicit.

Chaixin could guess. She had been set to copying those once. It was a good training exercise for demonlings, a way to improve their penmanship. (A way to encourage them to develop opposable thumbs, said one of the assistants, and Impudite with a sneer and a bite and a kick and oh how she _hated_ that assistant, who had private jokes with damned souls and nothing but scorn for demonlings a Force bigger than that.) She could, if she closed her eyes, call up a memory of the lists of punishments. Forces removed, of certain types or whichever type came off, in various numbers or percentages. Punishments of pain, or humiliation, or both. Death, in its various forms. Transfers. Confinement. Re-education.

Some of the punishments were only different ways of saying the same thing. That was a lesson too.

She folded one of the forms into a fan, and held it up in front of her. Like the picture from a book. The assistants said it was the most childish sort of preference--though really, they found any preference mockworthy--to admire _pictures_ , when words were better. (Some of them said that numbers were the best of all, words that meant nothing except for _how many_ , and thus could be used to describe anything, when combined in the right order. These conversations were interesting too, though she didn’t dare look to much as if she was listening in when the assistants talked about these things.)

But pictures opened up possibilities. Pictures said that there were entire worlds outside of the Archives. Anyone could say anything by words, Balseraphs were fine proof of that, but pictures meant more. Pictures meant someone had to think and sit down and carve out into the wood the lines that described these things no one saw in the Archives, and rub ink across the carved wood, stamp the wood across the paper, and then these lines--ink on paper, no different than words--were almost like looking into the actual place.

Not at all like being there. But almost like having a window in. As the teachers had windows into the pens, during quiet time, where silver and red and powder blue eyes would peer down to see who was being quiet and still. (Or not.) A window into a place that she was not.

She didn’t know if she wanted to be in another place. But she turned the fan back and forth, and thought about seeing such things, as more than lines on paper. As paper itself.

Footsteps pattered by outside of her cubby. Chaixin held still, so still that even the dust on the floor around her didn’t stir with her breath. Still as graves, one teacher had said, which made no sense, because graves were where damned souls came from, and they weren’t still at all, they were terrible at holding still, unless they were bound in place and kept there until their eyes went blank and they stopped doing anything at all. And then they were useless afterward.

“Chaixin,” said a small voice, a whisper through the walls of books, “let me in, let me _in_ , I know you’re here.”

She lunged for the wall and tore out handfuls of it, three spines at a go, until she’d made a hole big enough for Daosheng to squeeze in. And the instant the other demonling was inside, they built the wall back up. Hand to book, book to hand, into the wall with Daosheng giving her the pieces to slot back into place.

The last volume slotted in--a history of a dead place, everyone there dead, some demon’s scholarly work based on Force-tattered memories, and no one would ever go looking for it or wonder where it had gone--and they curled up around each other, waiting. Daosheng clasped her hands to her mouth. (Hands, now, where they’d been nothing like hands a year or two ago. Maybe she would scrape her way up to become an Impudite like that horrible assistant. She had the look for it, that almost-a-human look, with two delicate horns spreading out from the sides of her head like the ears of a fox.)

Chaixin did not put her hands over her mouth. She merely stopped breathing. It became easier with practice.

The footsteps that passed by were light and careful. Almost as light as a demonling’s. A steady step, ever so precise, never slowing or speeding, as one of the assistants went on searching for a student who hadn’t shown up at class. Who hadn’t shown up in the wrong way, who they had _noticed_ missing.

They waited for the footsteps to disappear into the endless silence of the Archives.

And then they waited longer, because only a complete idiot would think that _quiet_ meant no one was waiting, in a place like this.

Daosheng finally lowered her hands. “Dejati,” she said. The name was explanation enough. He had been a classmate of theirs until three weeks back, and should have been assigned to another classroom, _any_ other classroom. But the new Habbalite had been set to look after his old classmates, who knew his weaknesses and preferences and what he had looked like when he was a demonling. A demon thing. Not the angel he called himself now.

“He doesn’t know about this place,” Chaixin said. She was sure of that. He had led the teacher to a few secrets he had known, as soon as he’d been given the badge and scarf and soft gray shoes that marked his position. They had lost one classmate over those secrets, to who knows what (to who _wants_ to know what, that was more the description), and the others had been punished. Appropriately. There was an appropriate punishment for every type of disobedience.

They had copied out those lists, too.

Chaixin noticed when the punishment given didn’t match what the lists had said. She knew better than to comment.

“If he knew about this place,” Daosheng said, quiet and wry, “I wouldn’t have run here.” She leaned her chin on her knees, and sighed down at the floor, stirring patterns in the dust with her breath. “I should have swapped off with you. They notice when we’re both gone.”

“They usually don’t.”

“But they _did_. He did.” Daosheng pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “He’ll be waiting at our team when filing hours start. He thinks I know--something about him.”

“Do you?” Chaixin asked.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t use it against him. I _wouldn’t_. If I meant to, I would have said something when he was first being so terrible.”

“You should have,” Chaixin said.

Daosheng shrugged, thin shoulders up and down beneath the rough fabric of her tunic. “He’s still bigger than me. It wouldn’t help. There’s no point in hurting someone if it won’t help you.”

Chaixin let this comment stand, as it was the kind of opinion there was no arguing with. One might as well debate the merits of gold lettering on a spine versus silver lettering, or which direction to write across a page. “We can say we were in another class. Sometimes we are. We’ll say it together, and look like we mean it, and the filing clerk doesn’t like the assistants making trouble when there’s lots to put away.” And there was almost always lots to put away, except for that one horrible month when there’d been a fire somewhere and they were all set instead to picking apart singed pages and noting down, by the guide, the level of damage to each volume.

“It’s worse than that,” Daosheng said. “He saw me leave. We can’t trick him.”

“We don’t need to trick _him_ , only the clerk, and the clerk doesn’t care much.” Chaixin shoved aside the file she’d been reading. “And even if you weren’t in one class, missing one class is...the punishments aren’t so bad.” If they went by the list. Sometimes they went with what the list had said. Just often enough that people almost expected it.

“No,” Daosheng said. “I’m not doing it. I’m not going back. I won’t take it, not anything they do, not the box or the hooks or the dust, I _won’t_.” She put her tiny hands to Chaixin’s shoulders. They were, more or less, the same size, certainly the same number of Forces, and even so Daosheng always seemed the smaller one. Maybe it was that they’d given her a too-big tunic, or that she had so few of the lingering demonling pieces, the vestigial limbs that did nothing of use. Surely if she became an Impudite, she wouldn’t be like that assistant. She wouldn’t do favors to humans and hurt her old friends.

But just look at what Dejati had done. He had never been a friend, but he had been one of them, and it didn’t matter at all once he changed. There was no going back from the change. You could be anything, anything at all of the six true Bands, pick what you like, but then you were _that_ , with everything that Band thought and wanted and did part of your body and soul, and there was no way to change your mind afterward. No way to be something other than one of them.

“I want you to come with me,” Daosheng said, and Chaixin didn’t understand what she meant. Not at all.

“I already said that we’d go back together--”

“No. I’m not going back. I want leave.” Daosheng drew in a breath. “I want to leave the _Archives_.”

“You want to join the Game? We can’t,” Chaixin said, and patted her friend awkwardly on the head, directly between the horns. “They didn’t pick us after the test. We’re marked, up and down, with tags and everything. Even if we could get the bracelets off, and found new clothes, we’re still labeled, and they would know we hadn’t gotten this big in Hades without them having us in their records, there’s no way--”

“Further out. Away from all of Hades,” Daosheng said. “Some other Principality. One with some Prince who’ll take us in and let us be...different. Than here.”

“They’ll all have rules,” Chaixin said. “And punishments for breaking them. Here, we know what the rules are. We know how to do the work. How are we supposed to compete with demonlings who grew up in another place, and already know everything there? They’d be so far ahead of us!”

And she realized, like a blow to the stomach, that she was agreeing. She hadn’t meant to agree. But she was arguing over the details, instead of saying, _no, we can’t, let’s go back now, keep our heads down, find someone else to push into taking Dejati’s attention, it’ll be safe enough, we’ll survive._

“We’ll be clever,” Daosheng said. “Clever and careful, like we learned how to be here. We’ll read about where we’re going, so that we understand the place before we get there. Everything that matters is in books, we know that, everyone says it.”

Chaixin had the uncomfortable feeling that this was said by people who lived in a world of books, and perhaps those who lived in other Principalities would feel...differently.

But Daosheng’s hands were on her shoulders, and Daosheng’s eyes were locked to her eyes, and all Chaixin wanted was to show her friend how to make a form into a fan like the ones from the pictures, instead of thinking about the lists of punishments.

“Maybe we’ll die,” Chaixin said. “If we try this.”

“Maybe we’ll die,” Daosheng said, “if we go back to the work team and Dejati tells the clerk we ran away from class and hid from him, or something even worse.”

“If we’re leaving,” Chaixin said, the _if_ was a _when_ and they both knew it, but she wouldn’t say it out loud yet, like there was some safety in keeping it a secret even from the air for a little longer, “we’ll have to stick together.”

“Of course,” Daosheng said. “I would never leave without you.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Flower-gazing yesterday--  
flowers bright with bloom.  
Flower-gazing at dawn today--  
flowers soon to fall.  
Best drain it dry, this joy, this pleasure,  
underneath the flowers;  
Don’t wait for those springtime winds  
to gust them all away._  
\-- Bao Junhui, “Sung Out in Sympathy for Flowers” - trans. Jeanne Larsen

Daosheng sat cross-legged inside the house her friend had built, and chewed on her talons. She could have done otherwise. She could have sat still and quiet, unmoving as the shelves and walls. To nibble on the rounded tips of her little claws was an indulgence, and oh, how she longed to indulge herself. To spread out her arms and spin. To run. To run _for_ something, almost anything, instead of running away.

Some day she would run faster and farther than anyone could catch, unless she let them.

“Do you ever think about the sky?” she asked Chaixin.

“Which one?” Chaixin asked. She didn’t raise her head from where she hunched over the forms she was copying, one painstaking glyph after the next, off a fire-damaged stack of papers. The curve of her neck reminded Daosheng of an early teacher, a Djinn with a vulture’s head and wings. Chaixin’s wings spread behind her as a skeletal barrier, like ribs or horns or claws, and perhaps she would turn into a Djinn herself when she grew a little older.

They would all turn into something they weren’t, unless they didn’t grow up at all. That was the sweet promise and deep terror of being a demonling, instead of something static and finite like a damned soul. Daosheng had thought about this for years upon years, watching it happen to people she hated and people she did not hate, but cared about in some way regardless.

Among demonlings, _older_ meant _bigger_ meant _more Forces_ , except for when it didn’t. Daosheng knew she was older than Chaixin. She had been on the sweep and tag that brought Chaixin in, when those wings had been arms. Five Forces to Chaixin’s four. (Her hands and the pen, filling out the form at the teacher’s instructions; she could nearly feel the polished wood between her fingers again.) And yet Daosheng was smaller and more fragile. Less ready to make plans.

The only plans she felt ready to make were the big ones. The ones that said _no_ and _not here_ and _together_ , and left all the details to her friend with the perfect handwriting.

Chaixin poured sand across the last form, and shook it dry. “It’ll have to do,” she said. “The longer we wait, the more people they’ve have looking for us.”

“They might not send anyone,” Daosheng said. She laid her fingernails across her bare knees, and wondered what that would look like if she wore something like in the pictures of books. Robes and leggings and trousers and skirts, aprons and kirtles and socks and all the things humans gave different names to. Humans were good for that; they named things so many different ways, you could file what they said about anything nearly anywhere.

“Maybe not. People disappear.” Chaixin shrugged, wings folding down across her back. “Or maybe they’ll look for us everywhere. If they always followed the rules exactly, the way they teach them exactly, we would know.”

Daosheng dropped her knees to the ground, and leaned in to look at the forms, now that it was safe. “Where are we going?”

“Shal-Mari. It’s the safest. So many people that they won’t even try to look for us there, and all sorts of Princes to pick from.” Chaixin folded the forms into halves and quarters, precise all the way from edge to edge without having to measure twice to make the corners line up. “The next best is Stygia, but the only route I found from here to there runs through Per-Tartarus.”

“That place would almost be safe,” Daosheng said. “No one to catch us or chase us.”

“Because they would expect us to die. Or get eaten by the memory kelp, and turned into one of the things stuck in there.” Chaixin’s lip curled, showing pretty gray fangs that Daosheng loved. With fangs like those, no one dared put a hand over that mouth. “I’ve seen pictures. So we’ll take the border careful and slow.”

“If we knew one of the secret ways...” Daosheng didn’t finish that wish, and didn’t have to. If they knew one of the secret ways, they would be two more instances of those who disappeared between one class and the next, no one else knowing why.

“If we only wanted out, we could nearly walk into Abaddon,” Chaixin said, “but we want out and alive.” She stood up, tall and straight as if she were already a true demon.

But she held out a hand to Daosheng, to help her up, in a way no demon ever would.

“Get the box,” Chaixin said, “and I’ll take the files, and...look like I’m in charge. Because I’m taller. They’ll think I made you carry the heavier one, that way, instead of wondering why there’s two of us. Or we could take books, and...” She hesitated, then shook her head. “Box and files. That’s what most people carry.”

Daosheng took the box in her arms. Wider than her chest, so wide she had to wrap her arms around the sides and clutch it close to her belly, but not heavy at all. “I’m ready.”

“We have to be,” Chaixin said. She puffed a breath out through her nose, staring at the wall of books between them at the nearest aisle. “Ready or not, here we go.”

#

The safest check desks to pass were the slow ones. Back-aisle desks with two demons staffing them, no more, who would check every form and pass with a serene type of sloth--some of them had probably come from Sloth, back when that Word was eaten--and then wave you along. They didn’t care to make a fuss, if all the papers were in order.

Chaixin was leading them into the second-busiest check desk of the Archives, or at least of those Daosheng had heard of. It was not the one at the entrance, which she had never seen, but the entrance generally regarded by repeat visitors of the Archives to be the most efficient and reliable. (The one at the entrance was said to have lines that could last for days, and lunch breaks that shut down any progress towards the front for hours at a time.) Anyone who was in the know, or thought they were, used the secondary entrance instead. Shorter lines, and faster processing of them. But still...many people.

Daosheng walked with her eyes fixed on the number stitched across the back of Chaixin’s tunic. Not Chaixin’s number, which she had memorized long ago. New stitches had adjusted three of the glyphs to change the designation to one that did not, they hoped, exist at all, aside from the places where it had been written on the forms Chaixin carried.

On this side of the desk, the archival hush reigned supreme. Demons of other Words entirely, not only Servitors of the Game but those of the War and Death and Factions and Secrets and stranger things beyond, kept their mouths shut and their feet soft when they moved through the aisles. There were signs posted.

The signs didn’t detail the punishment for making too much noise in the Archives. People were expected to know. It was like knowing which was down, or not to be rude to things twice your size. Simple. Anyone who was a person, and merely an animate thing, could understand it.

And yet the people outside the walls, just past the doors, the ones coming up to the desks, they weren’t quiet. Maybe quiet by the standards of the outside, which were said to be monumentally loud, with never any standard hours of silence. Not for houses or neighborhoods or cities, not anywhere. The buzz of voices over voices sank into her bones and made her want to dash forward. Burst through the ropes marking out the winding line, leap over the desk, fling the box aside and drop into that crowd of people who talked and talked and stomped and oh, anything else they liked.

It wasn’t that easy. It was never that easy. She gripped the box and kept her eyes fixed on Chaixin’s back. (“Haste makes waste,” said their teacher, and Chaixin would agree with that. Little by little and step by step, to get where you want.)

Little by little and step by step, they followed the line to the desk. Three times, larger demons behind them in line simply pushed ahead, and every time Chaixin ducked her head and moved aside.

Slow and careful and head bowed. They were still moving forward. Between the eyes of small demons, ones barely larger than either of them. Towards the desk--it was almost a wall--with its two demons checking forms, one for each direction, and four guards. Two for each direction. There was no running through that, no leaping over it. What she ought to do was trust to Chaixin’s perfect handwriting and understanding of forms.

Hours had passed in line, though less than a day, when they reached the desk. Chaixin had to stand up on narrow toes to offer her form to the Balseraph at the counter.

“Identification,” said the Balseraph, three eyes turned on the papers before her and three turned on the demonling holding those papers. Chaixin pulled herself up further, fingers digging into the edge of the desk, and tilted her head forward. The number that was not a real one lay in delicate strokes across the back of her neck. 

The Balseraph flicked out its tongue across the number. The ink didn’t smear, it _wouldn’t_ , not after hours of waiting, but Daosheng was still holding her breath. “That’s not standard,” the Balseraph said.

“They processed a batch differently, when I was filed,” Chaixin said, her voice small and meek as it only was for terrible creatures. She wouldn’t speak like that for the teacher’s assistants, no matter how terrible they were, though she would keep her eyes down and her words polite for them.

“Turn around,” said the Balseraph, and read the numbers across the back of Chaixin’s tunic. “Mm. Fine. This is a half-day pass, you see right here? You have to be back to the desk by half a day from the stamped time.” She slapped a stamp down on the paper. “To the desk, not in the line.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for the warning, ma’am.”

“I don’t like cleaning sticky bits off my desk,” said the Balseraph, and yawned hugely, tongue slipping between silvery teeth. “Move along.”

Chaixin nodded rapidly, and slipped to the side, towards the desk gate. Daosheng kept just as close.

A leathery wing appeared before her. “Hold up,” said the Balseraph. “Forms.”

“She was on my form,” Chaixin said, voice skittering higher. “It’s--down at the bottom, one assistant. It’s all filled out. It has her number on it.”

“That’s for a familiar,” said the Balseraph. She smiled down at Daosheng, and the smile was worse than the yawn. “You, her familiar? I don’t think so. You’ll have to tote the packages yourself, little creature.”

“But my teacher said I had to take her,” Chaixin said. She shivered, horns to wings to bare toes, and it was not fear. “I’ll get in trouble if she doesn’t come with me. She’s--not allowed to go without supervision, she’s not old enough.”

“Not my problem,” said the Balseraph. “Keep moving. You’re holding up the line.”

“But--”

The Balseraph flicked a wing, and a Djinn’s paw descended from on high to pluck Chaixin up by the back of her tunic. “You have a pass,” the Balseraph said, in a cheerful sort of patience, “and your forms have been cleared, and you’re not on the watch list, and thus you are meant to be _outside_ , and not my problem.”

“I can’t--”

The Djinn flung Chaixin over the gate. She landed somewhere out of Daosheng’s sight, with a gasp.

“Move along! Have a lovely day! Don’t forget about the time stamp. Right there on the form for your reference, very convenient.” The Balseraph swiveled about, dropping her head down to Daosheng’s eye level. “You don’t have a form. You should move out of line.”

“Is there...” Daosheng swallowed, and tried to remember. How it worked in the stories. “Is there a fee for an emergency replacement form, since mine was misplaced? That I could pay to fill one out right now?”

The Balseraph rolled a few eyes in the direction of the guards. “You’d have to ask for that sort of thing _much_ earlier. Maybe someone in line can help you out, if you’ll be in so very much trouble for wandering about alone. But right now, you’re blocking the line. Which affects my processing metrics.” She touched the edge of her nose to the center of Daosheng’s forehead. “You don’t want to affect my metrics. Do you?”

“No,” Daosheng said. “No, I’m sorry.” She backed up, and bumped into the legs of the demon behind her. “I’ll come back with a proper form.”

“Look at that poor little thing,” said a voice overhead. Two hands spun her around, then caught her horns, tilting her head up to look at the owner of those legs. An Impudite--no, a _Lilim_ , all green with her hair caught up in an ornate bun full of gems and nets and sticks of polished wood. “One bit of paperwork dropped, and you’re in so much trouble. You need to get through here?”

Daosheng nodded. Those hands were still on her horns, but not holding her still. Only letting her horns slip between the Lilim’s fingers. An odd feel, so unlike the way teachers and assistants pushed demonlings around. “I was on the form, I was supposed to go through, I _was_.”

“I’m sure we have a little space left on our pass,” said the Lilim. “Let me take care of this for you. Cihangir, do give me that form, it’ll do just fine.”

The Habbalite standing a half step behind her gave the Lilim a folder. As with any Horror, he could almost be mistaken for an unusually solid damned soul; he stood a little taller than most, with a wide set to his shoulders, but was not outside the range of possibilities for their bodies. As with any Horror, he could never be mistaken for a damned soul; tiny beads covered his body, each paired with one exactly like it, and they were attached by silver rods piercing his skin. Tiny bells hung in rows from his forearms, each one muffled by an individual bag the size of Daosheng’s thumbnail.

He looked down at Daosheng, and she didn’t run. Because running made them chase. That’s what Chaixin always said, and Chaixin knew these things.

The Lilim leaned in to speak with the Balseraph, holding out her forms. Her voice was liquid, like ink across high quality paper. The ink from the best pens that never skipped or scratched. Daosheng wanted to listen to every word, to hold that voice close to her when it spoke that way and carry it inside her mind. But the Habbalite put a hand to her shoulder, and, no. It wasn’t a conversation for her.

Daosheng looked to the ground, and waited.

“Now,” said the Lilim, a hand to Daosheng’s horn again, “that wasn’t so hard, was it? Come along.”

The gate in the desk opened for them, and Daosheng stepped through. To a place that _wasn’t_ the Archives, for the first time ever. It was exactly the same, and it wasn’t the same at all. The desk made all the difference. That was inside, and this was outside, by legality even if the roof still stretched overhead. They were out of the line, _passing_ a line that led in, in the midst of demons and damned and. And.

She couldn’t see Chaixin anywhere.

“Thank you,” Daosheng said carefully, “and now I need to find my, my supervisor. I have this box for her. I was supposed to carry it for her.”

“A little thing like you, carrying a box like that? How unfair.” The Lilim shook her head. “I won’t have it. Cihangir, take that for her, and find our carriage.”

Daosheng tightened her fingers around the edges of the box. It popped right out from her hands, when the Habbalite pulled it away. “I’m supposed to watch that!”

“We’ll take good care of it,” said the Lilim. “Do you have a name?” 

The Habbalite was walking away with the box, the one with every supply they’d gathered for the rest of the trip, and Daosheng couldn’t see how she could stop him. “No, ma’am. I’m not old enough. I haven’t earned one.”

“Oh, yes. That custom of the Archives. But surely there’s something people call you. That your friends call you. A pretty thing like you must have some friends.”

“Tai,” Daosheng said. She spun around on a heel, her horn still caught in that hand that--would, she thought, catch tight if she tried to _run_. “They call me Tai, ma’am, and I’m very glad for the help, but if I don’t bring that box to my supervisor, I’ll be in trouble.”

“We’ll have it sent along,” the Lilim said. She pushed Daosheng’s horn back, and that was no light hold now, to look down at the demonling eye to eye. “You’ll be working for me now. Oh, sweet thing, don’t look so worried. It’ll be so much nicer than the Archives.”

Daosheng said, “Yes, ma’am,” as the Geas settled about her neck. And she couldn’t see Chaixin. Not anywhere at all.


	3. Chapter 3

_Slim, slim, the bamboo swaying by my window;  
Lush, lush the phoenix tree overhanging the gate.  
Bright, bright the lady by the green window,  
Cold, cold in her high terrace.  
Her pure sentiments outshine autumn frost;  
Her jade face eclipses lotus blossoms.   
Who, in life, can avoid parting?  
But I grieve that you’re enlisted so soon._  
\-- Bao Linghui, “After ‘Green, Green the Riverside Grass’” - trans. Charles Kwong

The back of Chaixin’s throat burned. As if dust could catch on fire inside of her. As if she could open her mouth and breathe out flames to devour her enemies.

There was no such option. The pictures in books lied, or spoke of creatures of dreams that had long ago been butchered by the Host. She had no Songs, no resonance, not so much as a stone in her hand to fling.

She was outside for the first time in her memory, and it was _all wrong_.

The world outside the library was not too large, but it was out of shape. The ceiling of Hades lay so far above her that she couldn’t see where it lay; the world might as well continue upward indefinitely, into some theoretical space that stretched between them and unknown reaches of of the celestial plane. Buildings were--buildings. Not walls and subdivisions within the Archives, but their own distinct structures, shoved up against each other and sharing walls or butting their own private walls against each other, shoulder to hostile shoulder like demonlings in a pen.

Air fell damp and warm across her tongue every time she took a breath, and if she had not been so angry, she might’ve tried to stop breathing, to get that inexplicable _wetness_ out of her insides. Nothing in the Archives tasted like it, except for blood.

She shuffled forward a step in the line at the entrance, head down, eyes down, watching sidelong. As her friend was swept away, Geas-locked and unable to protest. As all their supplies were tucked under a Habbalite’s arm, and then deposited carelessly behind a set of stairs along the way.

Chaixin slipped out of the line, frowning at her forms. As if she had just realized that there was something to keep her from passing through the line. Most of the line was made of people with their own problems, their own forms and deadlines and worries, but the Game was everywhere. The Game even entered the Archives to sniff out dissent and dissatisfaction, to take away the best and the worst for their respective fates. Best not to stand out. Best not to _run_ , like some spooked three-Force demonling. She was far too big for running now.

She walked briskly. No faster than anyone else, slower than a few demons with long legs or several, the speed of a harried demonling with an assignment and an angry supervisor waiting back home. (It wasn’t home. It was home, because home was where you came from, and it wasn’t home, because home was where you went back to, and she was never going back there again.) The Lilim was easy to watch: green and gold, with a cape that snapped and billowed behind her in a wind that did not exist. Anyone might watch that figure striding past, take note of the Habbalite pacing a respectful half step behind, and not even notice the demonling walking at the Lilim’s side. A small shoulder under a green hand, a small figure hidden by the sweep of the cape. Stolen so easily as that.

The box waited for her. Clothes for concealment, forms already forged, a handful of useful books, a map that wasn’t too old--

Chaixin walked past without slowing. Better to run into the night bare-handed than to risk losing sight of Daosheng.

Too many people moved across the street outside this exit of the Archives. (She refused to think of it as an entrance as well. Let it be as one-way and final as fire eating across paper.) Too many damned and too many demons, whatever their affiliations, a few dozen in view even with her back to the line, and yet no one bumped elbows. The streets stretched wider than any aisle or hallway she’d ever seen in the Archives. What did they _do_ with all that space?

They strode briskly, and so she matched their pace. They walked in straight lines, as if each one of them moved through an invisible corridor the size of a single aisle, and so she did the same. It made following the Lilim easier; she could appear to be moving coincidentally in the same direction, folder of papers clutched in one hand, and received little attention for it. People left the Archives all the time. Not people from her class. But still.

The Lilim turned a corner, and stopped at a pillared area in front of a towering building. (Portico, Chaixin decided. She had seen pictures.) A moment of conversation--no, not conversation, _command_ , however sweetly it was phrased--with the Lilim and Habbalite resulted into the latter walking away, while the Lilim sat down on a shaded bench. She spread her cape out beside her, and set Daosheng atop it. Then the cape folded over the demonling, hiding her again.

Chaixin bit the inside of her mouth, and let the sizzling burn of blood focus her mind.

The Lilim had stolen her friend. (Were they with Theft? But surely Theft wouldn’t be so brazen as to--no, if any Word was willing to commit a crime on the doorstep of the Game, it would be that one.) The Lilim who seemed ready to keep Daosheng for some great deal of time, who already had a Habbalite lackey, would certainly keep her new acquisition close. And would expect her lackey to return.

There was no way Chaixin could simply grab Daosheng and run, but she might be able to do something about the Lilim’s allies. Or find some way into a residence. _Something._. She turned a sharp right angle, as if she had just spotted her destination, and followed the Habbalite.

He took a service entrance at the side of the building, near the gates for the stables. Chaixin hurried to catch up with him, and strode in directly behind him. It got her a glance from an imp watching the door, and no more. She had a folder of papers. That meant business and purpose, no nefarious intent. (Leave it to the Lilim with dramatic clothing to have nefarious intent.)

(Chaixin became intensely, completely sure that the Lilim had fans. Proper ones, made of overlapping blades.)

The Habbalite strode to the stables itself, damned and demonlings scattering before his steps. Chaixin continued a few paces away to a dark stretch of half-open corridor, and counted to ten. Then she picked her way towards the stables, more carefully. Less as if she needed to be there. But she had practice in not drawing attention in other ways, and in here, no one in Game colors watched.

Damned souls huddled in groups inside the stables, penned together in sets near the rows of carts and carriages. The Habbalite inspected one group critically. “They will be ready in fifteen,” he told a soul in a drab uniform with a badge pinned to its cap.

“Thirty, begging every pardon,” said the human, bowing low. “Apologies of the hotel, but these things take time.”

“Fifteen,” said the Habbalite, “or we’ll be speaking with your master.”

The human bowed even lower, eyes fixed on the ground. “We will strive to the utmost, dread sir, but thirty seems more likely.”

The Habbalite backhanded the soul. “Fifteen,” he said, and stalked away, so fast that he would’ve run down anything that stood in his past. No one was that foolish.

Chaixin stood in the shadow of the door, and held her breath as he passed by.

The human straightened slowly, and then rubbed the side of its face with one hand. “Ass-licking son of a viper,” he said conversationally, and then raised his voice. “Ersilia! Lend me a hand with the harness!”

Another soul wandered in, nearly twice the size of the one who had spoken with the Habbalite. The first was a small one for one of the damned, though it seemed fully grown in its own way, and the second large enough that it would’ve stood half a head over the Habbalite. “Hold your fucking horses,” it said amiably, and patted the smaller human on the shoulders.

“Can’t,” said the first. “No horses to hold. Only this pack of green-footed foolish sons of--”

“We were all new once,” said the second. It--perhaps a she, Chaixin decided, as humans determined these things--opened the gate to the pen the Habbalite had been considering. One fist snapped out to grab the shoulder of a soul inside, when it might’ve bolted past her. (Or tried to. There was little bolting in that space around her body.) “Settle down, and we’ll have you all back in order.”

“I hate new teams,” muttered the first soul, hands in its pockets. “It’ll take us near twenty to get them all in harness, tell me it won’t, and because some shit-sucking Daughter of the Devil’s Whore wants a matching set in yellow.”

“Fifteen,” said the second soul, “if you stop complaining and help me.” She yanked out one of the souls with a practiced gesture, and slammed the pen’s gate shut again with her foot even as she marching the captured soul away. “Calm down, boy, _do_ settle down. You made it all the way here, didn’t you? You can haul right back the same way, easy as that, it’s a very easy job. Think of how much worse it could be. Better than Gehenna, I can tell you that. Or Sheol! Much less Abaddon. You have a fine job here, good work if you can get it, now lift your arms up so that I can buckle this properly.”

“Don’t want to go back to Shal-Mari,” the soul being harnessed whimpered.

Chaixin crept into the stable further, and scanned the area ahead. Stables on the corporeal had hay lofts, and sometimes ladders. Here were only pens, and those so lightly built that the nets stretched over their tops would buckle and sway if she tried to climb over them. Little means to move high, but there were enough carts to let her stay out of the sight of the livery souls as they worked. If she was quiet, and if none of the damned in the pens on the _other_ side cared to raise a fuss.

She crept along from cart to cart, passing the enormous boxy ones used for mass transport of the damned from Soul Yards to their proper destination, and daintier private carriages. One little dogcart--she wasn’t sure why it was called such a thing--with room for only a four-soul team, and maybe a pair of demons to ride. That one was equipped with an ornate perch for some Balseraph who cared to ride in style.

In Shal-Mari, the books said that proper style was to ride in curtained litters, surrounded by perfume and accompanied by a private musician or two, who might be within the same group as the pretty pets set inside. But in Hades, no one rode in litters. The Game preferred that everything taken through the city be dragged properly, and not lifted entirely off the ground, for reasons of some particular security measure the books had _not_ explained. Or perhaps the rule was there out of pettiness, or to cover for some other matter entirely. A distraction. With the Game, no one outside the Word ever knew.

Chaixin doubted most of those inside the Game knew either, any more than a demon of Fate could find books where they were supposed to be filed.

“Smells like rain,” said one of the livery workers. “--keep your foot still, monkey-loving bastard, or I’ll give you a reason to not want to move it.”

“It always smells like rain,” said the other livery worker.

“Well, it smells _more_ like rain, today.”

“It never rains,” said the second. “Wouldn’t be Hell if we got rain, would it? Oh, stop fussing, this won’t hurt at all. See, I’ve moved the buckle so it won’t rest on that sore.”

“It could rain,” said the first soul, in a lower voice. “Could be one of those nasty muddy rains that’s hell to walk through. Then it’d be proper, see? So it could be.”

“You keep on dreaming,” said the larger soul, and her voice was odd.

Fondness, Chaixin decided. That was it. Out loud, right there for anyone to hear, probably there for anyone to _see_ if they watched those two talk. No wonder the second one hadn’t come out until the Habbalite had left. These two souls were clever enough to have proper jobs with a little room to move around, to kick other souls around, so they were clever enough to hide such things. It wasn’t against any rule that she knew of, but who would say that kind of thing out loud? Where anyone could hear? People would notice, and they would know how to hurt you all the more easily.

Look at how easy it was to hurt her, entirely by accident. And now she had to find something that made one demonling a match and more for two demons. Some plan, because she did not expect to find artifacts or information lying about a stable floor.

A clammy lump of flesh closed along the edge of her right wing. Chaixin might have made a sound of surprise, if she had not been trained out of such noise so very long ago. She turned on her heel, fists clenching. Some filthy hulk of a soul had laid a _hand_ on her wing, its limb snaked out between the slats of its pen.

“You’re all sneaky, little thing, aren’t you?” it said, in a hoarse voice, and bared its teeth at her. “How about you do something for me, and I won’t call out for the guards.”

“Let go of me,” she said, “and I won’t punish you for touching me.”

He laughed. “If you think--”

She sank her fangs into the meat of his arm. All the way down, deep and sincere, as she had been wanting to bite someone since the moment that Djinn flung her over the gate. The soul shrieked, and flailed. Banged the side of her face against the pen slats in trying to pull his arm back, and she let him take it away, though she kept a gobbet of flesh in her mouth as a souvenir.

A nasty sort of souvenir. She spit it out on the ground, and fled. Down to her hands and knees (she could miss paws, she’d had those once, maybe she would again if she turned out Djinn, but she didn’t _want_ to be a Djinn if it meant not caring for Daosheng, wanted to be one with all her heart if meant always being able to find her) under the carts. Half the bellowing behind her was in human languages she didn’t know. The soul that had grabbed her was now a nuisance to its companions, and the noise a bother to other pens, until all the stables was made of petty human complaint and howling.

The livery workers’ voices rose over the din, cursing and coaxing to bring order back to the damned. Chaixin scrambled away, three vehicles over, to the carriage they had been hooking the yellow-haired humans to. A door on its side, with a fine curtain in its window, proved to be locked already. A perch at the front held the reins. Chaixin crawled beneath, and considered the--the pieces that held the wheels together, she didn’t know what those were called. One could only read so many books, learn so many things, in a lifetime of her length.

But at the back of the carriage was a long rectangle of a box, ready for luggage. Unlocked. _Empty._

She crawled inside, and shut the lid behind her.

Wings around her, chin to her knees, she held her breath while the stables quieted again.

No one opened the lid.

Likely no one would, if they had no reason to suspect a passenger riding along. And she could be oh so quiet. She had practice in that.


	4. Chapter 4

_I entrust my bitterness to a lute’s crimson strings,  
Hold back passion--my thoughts unbearable.  
Long ago I knew that a cloud-rain meeting  
Would not give rise to an orchid heart._  
\-- Yu Xuanji, “Deeply Moved, I Send This To Someone” 

Daosheng sat on the Lilim’s lap, inside the carriage. She would have preferred to sit on the cushioned bench beside the demon, but the Lilim--who had not yet offered a name, despite asking for one and bandying about that of her Habbalite freely--had swept her up directly after taking her inside, and said, “You’ll be able to see better from here. You’ve never seen Hades from this angle before, have you?”

No, never. Daosheng had never seen Hades at all, unless the Archives were counted as part of it, and that was a matter of occasional argument, even on the maps. She shook her head.

“Then take a look at the buildings. They’re not so _interesting_ as the ones in Shal-Mari, but there’s a certain, mm, style to them, don’t you think? All those straight lines up and down, and those pillars. It really ought to have canals.” Fingers slid up and down Daosheng’s horns. “When you’re older, maybe I’ll show you real canals, if you’re very good.”

“Does Shal-Mari have canals?” Daosheng asked, to say something. To look as if she was listening, instead of thinking. She had always been good at that in classes and in work groups, the trick of turning an expression that might be punished as too dreamy into something that seemed studious, by the application of the right words.

Words were so easy, but they were only good for little things. Slipping between the possibilities when the matter was fine and close. She folded her hands over her knees and thought of flinging herself at the door. Pulling it open, leaping out while the carriage moved on...

The Habbalite would catch her. Bigger and faster, with longer legs and longer arms. She wanted to be the one who was bigger and faster, three streets away before anyone else hit the ground to follow her.

The Lilim was saying something about canals, and parties. It wasn’t clear how the two related. “You’ll have a proper outfit,” she was saying, “something _adorable_ , with a necklace and pretty spirals all along your horns. Bronze, maybe.”

“Will those hurt?” Daosheng asked.

“They’re not like earrings,” the Lilim said, with a smile that Daosheng couldn’t put a description to. No one in the Archives ever looked at her like that. (Chaixin looked at her other ways, but there weren’t many smiles there.) “They slip on, and _right_ off. Just like that.” The Lilim plucked Daosheng’s hand up, and turned it over palm up. “We’ll get this terrible bracelet off you as soon as we’re back at my place. I have an obedient little Calabite who can remove it, and you mustn’t be afraid of him. He does what he’s told.”

Daosheng pressed her other hand harder against her knee, so that she wouldn’t reach up and touch the Geas at her neck. “I won’t be.”

“Mm?”

“Afraid of him,” Daosheng said, and slipped about on the Lilim’s lap to look out the window. More building outsides slipped past. How odd, to see them all from this side. It was just like seeing a person’s insides. The wrong part to look at, and always a little upsetting because of that, even knowing what they were like.

Shal-Mari wouldn’t have canals. Wouldn’t have so many books. Wouldn’t have classrooms or work groups.

Maybe Chaixin would catch up with her there. Surely Chaixin had seen her taken, and...Chaixin was clever, Daosheng knew it, knew it deep in her throat and her guts. There might be any number of Lilim in Shal-Mari, but there could only be so many Lilim with a Habbalite who looked that way. Chaixin would _find_ her.

And if she found a way to run away now, Chaixin might never know how to find her again.

Forever was such a long time to think about.

The buildings fell back as if cut by a knife, and walls that had nothing within them--except, perhaps, the whole of Hades itself--rose up ahead. Daosheng had never seen this sort of border checkpoint before, and yet it was clearly exactly that sort of thing. A place that told people where they ought to be, and that there were rules about being in the wrong place. Even buildings could speak, that way.

“Don’t you worry,” said the Lilim. “We’ll have all the paperwork in order, and you’ll pass through safely. They fuss to make themselves feel important, but they won’t give me any real trouble.”

_I am not worried._ It would not do to say that out loud. Daosheng nodded, and watched the walls rise up higher and higher ahead.

She expected the stop to be at the walls. But there was a gate that she could not see from her window, until they were nearly passing through it. The wall itself was the width of a large corridor, the kind that led to different rooms of books instead of having books along their own walls. Old stone passed by the window, so close she could’ve touched it if the window held no glass, rough and damp like nothing in the Archives ever was.

She wanted to pet it, or lick it, or pull out a rock to take along with her. “Can we open a window?”

“You don’t want that,” said the Lilim. Which meant no. “We’re passing over a bridge--look down, see, and you can almost see off the edge of it. All that land below used to belong to Sloth and Oblivion. The smell of it is terrible. Bad enough that we’ll have to step outside for a moment at the border.”

“But that was a border,” Daosheng said, even as she remembered that it was unwise to argue. “Aren’t we out of Hades, now?”

“Out of Hades, perhaps, but not yet to Shal-Mari. And since no Prince holds this land anymore, the Game, in its great wisdom and bounty of free time, watches over crossing through this place. A sort of...subsidiary of Hades, as it were.” The Lilim laughed, short and hard. “May they have _every_ benefit of this place that they can scrape from it.”

The carriage rolled to a halt. Outside, the Habbalite spoke with other people--demons, Daosheng decided, because no damned soul would address him in such a manner--while the carriage team shuffled and muttered.

“They’ll be coming along to ask for papers,” said the Lilim. “It’s such a bother, but the Game does like its little details. All you have to do is say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to my questions when I ask you, just like you’d think you should, and stay quiet otherwise. Can you do that, pet?”

Daosheng nodded.

“Good. You’re such an obedient little thing.” The Lilim swept her down to the carriage floor. “Try to breathe through your mouth. It may help.”

A Djinn in Game colors, a badge strapped to her jaw, tapped on the door of the carriage. When she pulled the door open, she ducked her head, though her eyes never lowered. “Dame Ilanit, if you would step out?”

The Lilim did not step out of the carriage. She swept out, cape snapping and swirling about her as if it had a mind to consider how it would look best in her wake. When it had settled properly at her ankles, she held out a hand to help Daosheng down to the ground.

The three of them stood beside the carriage, demonling and Lilim and Djinn, and not two steps behind the Djinn lay the edge of the bridge. It had no wall of its own, no rail, only an end to the ground. Mist twined up from whatever lay below, painting gray lines in the air that never encroached on the bridge itself.

And far off, so far it would’ve been hidden if not lit up with green and white lights, stood the gate to Shal-Mari.

The Djinn and the Lilim were speaking about paperwork and border crossing and customs. Daosheng did not find it interesting. There was bribery involved, subtle and deniable, and negotiation over how much, over what trouble one or the other of them could create if they did not come to satisfactory terms. A Calabite and Habbalite in Game uniform stood further down the bridge, at the actual bar across the road. They had sneering expressions to aim at the Lilim’s Habbalite; he had the equal to offer in return, between aiming whip cracks at damned who fussed too much in their traces.

Daosheng folded her arms, and stared at the mist. Too dangerous to stare at the gates of Shal-Mari, and look as if she wanted to make it there. (Chaixin would find her. Surely. Forever was a long time.) Best to be the Lilim’s pet for a little longer. However long it took.

“We have to search the carriage,” said the Djinn, as if she had scored some nasty point.

But the Lilim only said, sounding terribly bored, “If you must, do get on with it.”

The Djinn climbed into the carriage, tail lashing behind her. She checked under the cushions, under the seats. Poked at the floor itself and then the ceiling.

Daosheng drew in a deep breath, and wondered what was supposed to be so terrible about the smell on the bridge. The air was warm and wet, and every breath wanted to bring her a memory. No memory that she could identify, not the time she first saw Chaixin, not the moment she decided to leave the Archives, not the most recent Force acquired and the way it changed her. But there was _something_ waiting in the air for her to remember it, if she only stood there long enough and listened hard enough. _Breathed_ hard enough, as if breathing was another sort of sense--maybe it was taste or smell that the memories wanted as a route--so that she could see right through the fabric and music of reality to what was down below.

No, that didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t be remembering anything from what lay below when she’d never so much as seen the place.

Daosheng took a step toward the edge.

“Careful,” said the Lilim, a hand on her shoulder. “Be careful about the way this place smells. It can give you odd notions. You’ll hold still, now, like a good girl, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Daosheng said.

“What’s this?” asked the Djinn. “Contraband? Paperwork says three, not four. Dame.”

There was nothing to hear beyond that. Of course not. Daosheng turned to see Chaixin dangling there, silent as ever, face like stone. (The dry stone of the Archives, and not the wet rough stone of the bridge.) The Djinn held her up by the back of her tunic.

“That one’s not mine,” said the Lilim. “A clever thing, though, to sneak in and try to pass that way.” When she said _a clever thing_ , it was not the same voice as she used to say _a pretty thing_.

“It’s illegal,” said the Djinn, “to try to sneak contraband out like this. There’s paperwork for that. Fines. Strictly against the rules. You oughta check your carriage before you come through. Everyone knows that, so if you didn’t check, that means--”

“I do follow your line of argument,” said the Lilim. “However, as that one is no business of mine, you may as well dispose of it as you like. Throw it away, and perhaps then there’s no paperwork to be filled out.”

“There are those fines,” said the Djinn, hefting Chaixin up and down while her feet dangled and wings hung still. Perfectly composed, as if it was quiet time all over again.

Sometimes they had found each other side by side in the pen during quiet time. And that made everything so much better.

Daosheng tugged on the Lilim’s sleeve. “She’s mine,” she whispered. “Please, we need to keep her, she’s my friend.” A dangerous word. And nothing to lose from using it, now. Let it be a lever or a chain, so long as it kept Chaixin with her.

“Be quiet, pet,” the Lilim said, and patted Daosheng between the horns. “The adults are talking.”

The Geas nudged her, and. She could not speak. Could not protest. Words were so _useless_ when anything really mattered.

She stepped backward. Nearer the edge of the bridge. She pointed to the side, while the Lilim and Djinn argued over what to do with the inconveniently acquired second demonling.

Chaixin’s expression twisted a little. Words weren’t strictly necessary for such agreements, once you knew a person well enough.

Her friend squirmed out of the tunic, and dropped to the ground on hands and feet. Bolted for the side of the bridge, where mist waited.

“Stop, pet,” said the Lilim, as Daosheng turned, and the Geas held her in place, gasping. “What do you think--”

Chaixin grabbed Daosheng’s hand, and pulled them both over the edge.


	5. Chapter 5

_We’ve come to this pavilion for surpassing secrecy:  
A world forms, transcendent and separate.  
Morning clouds emerge from among the rafters,  
Spring waters are level with the steps.  
Misty grasses line the islet banks,  
On lakeside hills, roads are half ramparts.  
Just as I forget that our oars have been stopped for a long time,  
I look down and am overwhelmed._  
\-- Wu Xun, “The Pavilion at the Lake’s Heart” - trans. Carol R. Kaufmann

Chaixin hit the ground first.

The impact should have hurt more. She had fallen from shelves, and she knew how distance made the pain worse. (It couldn’t do real damage, not to the soul, but so very many things could _hurt_ without damaging.) From the bridge to the ground had taken so long, enough time to pull Daosheng closer and spread her wings, flap wildly to no avail, take four long breaths while neither of them said anything.

Her wings had done nothing. But the fall only knocked the breath from her. She lay on the ground, gasping, and nothing had broken. It should have hurt more. She would have said that out loud if she could make words.

Daosheng lay on top of her, shaking.

Chaixin stared up above. The bridge was a black line above, thin as pencils, cutting the mist in two. All the sky around it was white and gray, like an arched ceiling streaked with soot. It felt terribly familiar.

She had never seen anything of its like, but it felt so much like she ought to know what this place was, from having seen it before. Exactly like this, lying on her back with Daosheng laying on top of her, and her wings aching around her.

“It’s the land of Oblivion,” Daosheng said. Her voice was thinner than before. Something about the air around them, and the way it puffed away from Daosheng’s mouth with every word. “Oblivion and Sloth. We have to get up, Chaixin. We have to keep moving or we’ll be stuck here.”

Chaixin nodded.

Daosheng slid off her, and said, “We can find Shal-Mari. We’ll follow the bridge, and then--find a way to climb up. I don’t know how. We’ll figure it out.” Her voice wobbled. “It’ll be as safe as the Archives, if we stick together.”

“That--” Chaixin swallowed. Her throat hurt for the speaking, and she couldn’t think why. “That was never safe.”

“Yes,” Daosheng said. “Exactly.” She offered both her hands out to Chaixin. “Please. We have to move. This place--it makes me want to remember it. To sit down and remember things I’ve done here, even though I’ve never been here before. I don’t think it’s safe to stay for long.”

Chaixin took Daosheng’s hands, and stood. “Shouldn’t Oblivion be making us forget?”

“I don’t know,” Daosheng said. “Maybe we’re remembering what other people forgot, or--oh, your wings!”

Chaixin spread her wings out, and pulled one about so that she could look over it. Nothing but tatters now, shreds hanging from the struts. Nothing that could get her a stretch of air caught to lift her up. (Truth be told, they hadn’t been able to lift her properly since she had grown her fifth Force. Only little creatures, insignificant ones, could lift themselves against the will of the Princes who made the world hold everyone _down_. Creatures too small for Princes to care if they flew.

“They’ll mend,” she said. “We need a way out of here, you’re right, but not Shal-Mari. If we go near there, that Lilim will find you again. They have ways.”

“It’ll wear off,” Daosheng said, tugging at the Geas on her neck with her fingers. She was a dark figure against the mist, perfectly clear and half-hidden in turns as the whiteness swirled around her. “If I wait long enough, it’ll go away.”

“Or she’ll send messages,” Chaixin said. “What if she tells you to come to her? What then? You’ll have to go.”

“I’ll have to go now, too! Even if I’m not in Shal-Mari!” Daosheng’s hands bunched up into tiny, helpless fists, and the mist fled from her breath. “I’ve got this horrible buzz, it’s in my head and my body and my fingertips, _everywhere_ , because I didn’t do what she said, and I don’t know how it works, if she can make that happen again and again and _again_ , until it wears off. What if that happens?”

“Then you can turn it into Discord,” Chaixin said.

“I don’t want--”

“I’m not going to lose you again.” Chaixin took Daosheng’s hand. “We’ll hold onto each other, and we’ll go--to Stygia. There are three Princes to choose from, who might take us. One of them will. Princes can fix _anything_ , and we’ll find out what it takes to get this fixed. If you end up with Discord before we get there, then--we’ll do more. To get that fixed too.”

“I don’t know how to get to Stygia,” Daosheng said.

“Neither do I,” said Chaixin. “But we’ll find someone who can tell us. Or we’ll find the way ourselves. Or--we’ll even stay here forever, and that’s still better than some places.”

“I don’t want to stay in this place forever,” Daosheng whispered.

Chaixin spread a wing over her friend, and did not let go of her hand. “We’ll find a way out.”

#

Streams cut across the land. Every one of them came as a surprise. One step after the next, and then suddenly stepping into water, warm ripples lapping against their ankles and the ground soft beneath their feet. Step after step through the deepening water, ankles to knees to waist, and then every time that Chaixin had decided they should turn around, find another way--that was when the water would grow shallower.

She spoke, sometimes, to blow the mist away. To be sure she was still there. She knew Daosheng was there, hand in hers, shivering back beneath her wing, words pushing back the mist.

Was Chaixin there? That was her question. The one she would not speak out loud, because it wouldn’t do to worry Daosheng. She knew where she was when the water climbed up and down--or was it her own feet, down and up, and the water staying in the same place? She was there and that was her and she was still walking onward, alongside Daosheng, who was always and inevitably and irrevocably and completely real. Nothing could take that from her.

The ground sloped up beneath her feet, and she stumbled.

“Careful,” Daosheng said, a hand to her side. An odd sort of feeling, hand to side, when usually her tunic would have been there in the way. It was no different from hand against hand, and entirely different.

Chaixin wanted to explain it, but she was having trouble finding words. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Forward,” Daosheng said. “And...up? Do we want up?”

“Yes,” Chaixin said. “Up is good.”

The ground sloped and bumped. Up and forward and up, a proper _hill_ \--she had the word for that--with sides covered in a slick coating of tiny soft strands, flat ones that crushed beneath her feet and curled between her toes.

"I can't see the bridge anymore," Daosheng said.

"I don't remember," Chaixin said, "where it is." She did not remember what it looked like. Why should she remember that? She had been hiding for most of her time on it, carried for a moment, and then running. There was so little reason to look at the bridge, on it or below it. Reasonable enough to forget. She had barely known in the first place.

It wasn't as if she were forgetting anything important. The hand in her hand.

A building sprang up before them. One moment mist, and the next white pillars standing before them. They stretched up to some unseen ceiling, two rows stretching away towards a blue-tinged light in the distance.

“That’s _something_ ,” Daosheng said. “Let’s go find it.”

Chaixin squeezed her hand tighter. “I don’t think it’s a way out.”

“But maybe it’ll have someone who can tell us a way out. Maybe they’ll--want tasks, like in some of the stories. We can do those if we have to. It’s better than mist and fog forever, isn’t it?”

In the mist and fog, Daosheng was eternal. Chaixin swallowed, and said, “If you have to go see, I’m coming with you.”

“Of course,” Daosheng said.

The space between the pillars was no longer ground, but floor. Polished stone, cold and stinging against Chaixin’s feet for the first three steps, then pleasantly cool. Six steps, and she could hear her own footsteps again. Nine, and she could hear Daosheng’s as well.

They did not walk in time, but they walked together. That was more important.

The blue light grew larger and brighter and nearer, until it filled the space around them and colored the pillars a powder blue that reflected across their hands and horns.

The pillars fell away, and they stood in a room wider than--no, not wider than any Chaixin had seen before, but the largest empty space she’d seen from side to side. In the center lay blue-tiled pool of water.

And in the water lay an enormous Djinn. Its paws stretched from one side of the pool to the other, and its chest heaved up, sank down, in a steady rhythm that matched the flickering light and the ripples across the pool’s water.

“We could ask her,” Daosheng whispered.

Chaixin shook her head. “Its eyes are closed. I think it’s...sleeping.”

“It can’t sleep,” Daosheng said. “ _Humans_ sleep. Or--maybe Nightmares demons, but not here.”

“If Sloth owned this place,” Chaixin said, “maybe demons can sleep here,” and that silenced her friend for a moment.

The Djinn did not open its eyes, or change the pace of its breathing.

“Maybe anyone could sleep here,” Daosheng said. “What do you think it’s like? I would--if it weren’t so dangerous, I would want to try. Maybe we could get to the Marches that way. I wouldn’t mind living in the Marches.”

“It’s dangerous,” Chaixin said.

“Everywhere is dangerous.”

Chaixin looked back, and saw no pillars. She lowered her voice. “Let’s walk around it. This thing can’t help us, if it’s...sleeping, or doesn’t want to talk, and if we bother it, it might bite.”

“If we were back at the Archives,” Daosheng said, as they walked about the edge of the pool, “it would be quiet time by now. And it’s not. We’re just _talking_.”

“Hush.”

“She’s not waking,” Daosheng said. “She doesn’t care. Djinn don’t. They don’t care about anything at all, except what they’re attuned to, and they keep that locked down and quiet and it’s like being in the pens all over again, and--” She spun around, her hand slipping from Chaixin’s. “You can’t. You _can’t_ turn into that, you just can’t, I would be so--I would--”

Chaixin reached out to grab Daosheng’s hand again. “Don’t let go! We’ll get lost.”

“You can’t be a Djinn,” Daosheng said, and held her hand back so tightly it was if she’d never let go. “Please don’t. Anything else, anything at all. I know everyone has to change, if we don’t die first, but don’t be a Djinn. You know I won’t.”

Chaixin shook her head. “What does it matter? Wouldn’t you want me to be able to find you? If anyone stole you.”

“Not if you have to be like that,” Daosheng said. “Pick something else. Be something else. I’ll be just like you, whatever you want, even if you want to be a Habbalite. We could be that, if you wanted.” Her voice was high and thin, and the Djinn didn’t so much as twitch an ear. “We could be angels in Hell. The same. Habbalah care about all sorts of things.”

“I won’t be one of them,” Chaixin said, “because they’re not angels. They’re just...lying to themselves. Like Balseraphs.”

“But not a Djinn either.”

“Not a Djinn,” Chaixin said, tugged Daosheng along faster. “Yes, if you insist, not one of those, I don’t _care_ what I turn into, but I want to get out of here before that one wakes up.”

She remembered a Djinn who taught them, and not what its name had been. But so long as she was touching Daosheng, they would be safe. Together. The same thing.

“I want you to care,” Daosheng said.

“Then I _will_ ,” Chaixin cried, loud for a moment in frustration.

The Djinn’s ear twitched.

Chaixin ran, and dragged Daosheng along with her by the hand.

Ran until they found pillars, and walls, and enormous bright archways that she didn’t dare move through, not if all the lights would hold more enormous demons. She ran until they came to a small blue door--barely large enough for a damned soul to walk through--and she kicked at it until it opened for her, and she pulled Daosheng through to a dark hallway that was almost, almost dry.

“This has to go somewhere,” Chaixin said. “Hallways do. It’s what they’re _for_.”

Daosheng only nodded, breathing fast through her nose, lips clamped shut. In the darkness, she almost disappeared, but for her eyes and her horns.

“Who are you?”

Chaixin spun around, wings flaring out. The voice was new, and she could not find its source. The hallway was so narrow, there was nowhere for it to be.

“Who are you?” asked the same voice. From above, and when Chaixin looked up, she found herself eye to eye with dozens of eyes, all hidden behind a translucent layer of slime. “Who are you?”

Chaixin slapped at the Shedite with all her claws out. “Stay behind me,” she told Daosheng.

The Shedite flinched at the blow, and said, “Who are you? Who _are_ you? Who are _you_?”

Chaixin clawed it again, ripping out two eyeballs and a handful of slime. “Go away! You leave us alone, or I’ll hurt you worse.”

“Who _are_ you?” The Shedite curled up closer to itself on the ceiling, but it wouldn’t retreat. “Please, who are you?”

“Don’t _hurt_ it,” Daosheng said, and Chaixin caught herself short, hand out and claws ready. “Don’t--it’s not attacking. It’s not calling for anyone. It’s only asking.” She hiccuped, and leaned in close against Chaixin’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s like us. Maybe it got lost here.”

“I’m not lost,” said the Shedite. It rippled along the ceiling. “Who are you?”

“I am Daosheng. My friend is Chaixin. Who are you?”

The Shedite bubbled along its surface, mouths swimming out and retreating. “...who am I?”

“Yes,” Chaixin said. “It’s a simple question. It’s the same as yours was. Do you know a way out? How to get out of this place?”

“Yes,” said the Shedite. “The way back home.”

“Then _take_ us,” Chaixin said. “Why are you even here, if you can leave? Who would want to stay here?”

“I can’t go,” said the Shedite. “Not until I know who I am. I lost that. I lost it in here, when I was looking to steal something. And now I don’t know. I can’t go. Not until I have myself back.”

“If I tell you who you are,” Daosheng said, “will you take us back to your home?”

“Yes?”

Daosheng sat down, right there in the middle of the hall. She tugged Chaixin down, to sit beside her. And then she patted the floor in front of her. “Sit here,” she told the Shedite. “I’ll give you back who you are.”

The Shedite dropped from the ceiling with a splat. The corridor wasn’t so dry as it had been. “Who am I, Daosheng?”

Daosheng closed her eyes. Opened them again, and nodded. “I remember,” she said. “Your name is Enki.”

“Enki?”

“That’s what she said,” Chaixin muttered. But Daosheng squeezed her hand, and she fell silent.

“Yes,” Daosheng said. “Enki. You were made somewhere else. A long ways away from here. You were one with the animals, all the wild creatures. Do you remember? When you ran and flew with them, swam with them. In places of wild water and bright stars in the sky.”

“I remember,” whispered the Shedite.

“Then...” Daosheng chewed on her lip. “Then someone decided that you were terrifying. Because you were like the animals. So they sent someone out to call you to civilization. Someone you loved, with long hair and perfume and smooth skin.”

“I remember,” said the Shedite. “She told me she loved me.”

“Mm. Yes.” Daosheng clutched at Chaixin’s hand, and only then did Chaixin realize how frightened the other demonling was. But Daosheng’s voice was perfectly steady. “And she brought you back to live among the humans. Like one of them. In their cities, not in the wild. You made a friend, there. A very powerful friend. Someone big and strong, who you would follow anywhere. Sometimes you called him Gil. Do you remember?”

“I do.”

“Of course you do. You fought things together. You were so big, once! You fought the beasts of the forest, the ones that you knew before. But the people in Heaven were jealous. They didn’t like how powerful Gil was, or you were. They sent down the Bull of Heaven to kill your friend. You must remember that.”

“The Bull of Heaven,” said the Shedite. It bobbled on the floor. “The Cherub. It was a Cherub. Of course.”

“And you fought it with your friend,” Daosheng said. “But it hurt you so badly, you fell back down. Until you thought you were dying. And he said that he was going to find a way to fix you. He went looking for a way to fix you, while you lay there and said, I wish I had never left the creatures of the wild, because there I was happy.”

“I was happy.”

“And then...” Daosheng’s voice faltered, and she looked to Chaixin. “And then...”

“And then,” Chaixin said, “you went looking for him. Because he was the one who got you hurt, but he was still your friend. That’s how you got here. That’s how you got lost.”

“I remember,” said the Shedite. “Where did my friend go?”

“It’s easy to be mixed around in this place,” Chaixin said. “He must’ve gone back home already, to find you. He must be waiting for you there. If you go back now, maybe you’ll find him. And he can--fix you.”

“All I wanted,” said the Shedite, “was to be with the birds and the beasts again. To get out of those humans and be something freer. Out of the cities. Do you think that’s wrong? That I gave up on my friend?”

“Of course it’s wrong,” Chaixin said. “But he’ll forgive you. He’ll take you back, if you go back to him. And we’ll go with you, to explain what happened. So that he’ll know it wasn’t that you ran away from him. We’ll tell him that you were looking for him all along.”

The Shedite contracted a little. Then it wobbled, a rippling nod. “Yes,” it said. “Yes, that would be for the best. He’ll know it’s true if we all tell him. A vote of confidence. I voted for things, you know. Important things.”

“Because you were very important,” Daosheng said. She climbed to her feet, Chaixin right at her side all the way. “And you can be again. Will you show us the way to your home, Enki?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Shedite, and spun its eyes to the other side of itself. “This way. I’ve never forgotten the way home.”


	6. Chapter 6

_The Three Gorges are far away  
many thousands of miles,  
But all at once they come flowing  
into my secluded chambers.  
Huge boulders crash down cliffs,  
audible under his fingers,  
Waterfalls and rushing waves  
rise from in the strings.  
It seems at first some bursting rage,  
thundering gales within..._  
\-- Li Ye, “A Song Written On The Topic ‘Streams Flowing Down in the Three Gorges‘” - trans. Stephen Owen

Stygia did not open up around them as Hades had. It swallowed them up, a narrowing of the world around them until they were walking between walls of stone with a ceiling visible once more overhead. Water gurgled in unseen corners--did tunnels such as these properly have corners? They did not have angles the way the Archives did, but curves and joints and holes, any of which proved to be itself more curved and jointed and ragged with further tiny holes on closer examination, and the edges of those holes were themselves rough, as if there was no end to the lack of what was straight and clear.

That was the place Chaixin meant to make her home. She did not know how to think of it as that. The Archives had been home because the Archives had been all there was, around and about. Walls and boundaries and doors that led to new places not to go. Stygia was holes in everything, and darkness always stretching beyond the places vision ran.

Droplets fell from the ceiling onto her nose and shoulders.

“It’s wet,” she said, to hear her own voice. There was no mist to see, or to muffle what she said. An echo rippled back at her from a great distance, _wet wet wet_ , and subsided into mumbles.

Daosheng squeezed her hand. “Everywhere is wetter than the Archives.”

“It wasn’t always,” said the Shedite. It rolled onward, watching them with a third of its eyes. “Once upon a time when there was a cold, cold wind. We had shawls and sponges and we kept the damp out of Stygia.”

“When was that?” Daosheng asked.

“I don’t know,” said the Shedite. “Once upon a time is what you say when you don’t know when it happened, and you’re not sure if it happened at all.”

“Secrets would know,” Daosheng said. She bumped shoulders with Chaixin. “We could try them, don’t you think? We could learn all _sorts_ of things, and never tell anyone. Like having our own room of books all over again.”

“We don’t have any secrets to buy our way in,” Chaixin said. “Or any way to find some.”

“We don’t have much of anything,” Daosheng said. Which could have been an accusation, should have been, because Chaixin knew it would’ve been right and proper to take the blame for not keeping a better watch on that box, but from Daosheng it was merely a statement of fact. They had between them two bracelets stamped with numbers, one tunic, and a Shedite that might try to eat them if it changed its mind about how it liked their story.

“Everyone starts with nothing,” said the Shedite. “That’s why you take it from someone else.”

Chaixin thought this through. “Where do the other people get it from, what you take? Since they started with nothing too.”

“From someone else before them,” said the Shedite.

“But what about before that? Someone has to have a thing first, before someone else can take it. Where do those come from? The things worth having.”

“Oh,” the Shedite said, a shrug moving through its body, “there’s always someone to take things from. That’s how it goes, all the way back.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Chaixin said, but she said it quietly, because Daosheng was giving her a look that told her not to draw too much anger from an older demon.

Older, but not much bigger than her. Certainly not as big as the two of them put together.

Someone howled in the tunnels. Wild and angry, a rolling voice unlike any Chaixin had heard before. She stepped forward to where she’d be placed best between Daosheng and whatever might be coming. “What was that?” she whispered to the Shedite, in case it felt like telling the truth.

“That’s the wind,” said the Shedite. Enki hadn’t lost all its memories, had it? Or was it making up what it knew? Perhaps it had lost nothing at all, and it was only pretending to be lost, to trap them--

Except she couldn’t think of any reason why a Shedite would stay in a place so dangerous as that for such a small reward as a pair of demonlings. A small and dangerous thing for the Shedite to steal, and it with no resonance to keep them under control, no artifacts, nothing but its knowledge of the terrain.

“I wish we had the map,” Daosheng said, a small voice beside her and a small weight leaning against her side.

Chaixin squeezed Daosheng’s hand. The howling stopped, and the air bit sharp across parts of her body she’d grown used to covering with cloth. “It probably wouldn’t help,” she said. “Would it, Enki?”

“Maybe a map from the right person. The right map. The new map. The maps in my head are old, back to the days...” Its eyes slid through its body, pupils pointing towards all directions. “After the birds. Before the Bull of Heaven. These places change.”

“How do they change?” Daosheng asked. “There aren’t any books to file. No shelves to move. It’s only walls and floors and ceilings.”

“The will of the Princes,” said the Shedite.

That was how everything changed. The will of Princes, the will of demons, even the will of humans scrabbling across their ancient rocks and seas. The world became otherwise not by accident, but through the combined pressures of every creature with enough sense of self to stand up and declare that what surrounded it should conform to the desires of those strong enough to have any.

She had built her own little world out of what she took from other places in the Archives, creation and theft and thought and defiance to tell that one small spot between the shelves that it ought to be what she desired and not merely its own passive state any longer. Some day another demonling, running from her teachers, would find that place. Chaixin could be long dead or fledged or changed in any number of ways, and what she had done, what she had built, would remain. A sign of her own existence, whether or not she existed.

She liked the thought of it. She would never be a Prince of Hell, but oh, she could still push reality about by wanting to hard enough.

“Someone is coming,” Daosheng whispered. “Unless it’s the wind again?”

“It’s always the wind,” said the Shedite, huddling back nearer to them. As if they were the ones who might protect it--who would even want to protect it, though perhaps it was wise to keep track of their one native guide--against whatever might approach. “Sometimes the wind and other things, but always the wind.”

The wind brought them a pack of humans. Dirty creatures with wet hands and overlapping layers of decaying clothing, every one of them an affront to any Archival idea of tidiness and order. The damned crept out of cracks in the rocks and stalked down the not-hallway in an irregular trickle that built up to--Chaixin counted. Eleven. She did not trust the eyes of any of them, would not have trusted them to carry a book across a well-lit room.

A handful of them whispered to each other in languages Chaixin didn’t know, at least to hear. She could read more human tongues than she could interpret from a speaker.

Chaixin held her chin high, and did not slow down, for all that her path was leading her into the crowd. They weren’t _much_ of a crowd, not compared to a class of demonlings. The nearest few flinched back at her approach. The proper respect, and the key to achieving it--to being recognized by the damned as a near-demon and not a small bit of nipping goo--was to act as if you were owed it. That was how the humans knew you were clever enough, big enough, fast enough, to be dangerous.

“What idiots,” said the leader of the humans. Her face was streaked with gray lines too regular to be filth. “Walking through _our_ territory like this.”

“You own nothing,” Chaixin said, “but what has been loaned to you by a real person. Do you have a master?”

“We report back--” began one of the humans, the kind with a large frame but no more Forces than the others, but it was silenced by a shove from its leader.

“Never mind that,” said the human in front. She now stood in front of Chaixin, arms spread, a dagger--no more than a sharp chunk of rock, one end wrapped in leather--tilted in an insultingly pointed direction. “You little idiots, and that snotball at your back, have nothing. Nothing worth taking but your hides, and what would we get for that? So maybe we’ll take you apart for the fun. Or the practice. Unless you have a better idea. What do you say?”

“If you get out of my way now,” Chaixin said, “I will ignore what you’ve said.” Daosheng’s breath was a line of steady warmth along her left shoulder. Her friend was not afraid of anything, and so she couldn’t be either.

The human showed her teeth. Sharp, and some were missing. “A little thing like you, making threats? I said it, and it’s true. What idiots.” She raised the dagger. “Maybe we would’ve let you go for Essence. But even your hide’s worth something.”

“Oh,” Chaixin said. There was a lightness all through her body, rising up into her mouth. As if her jaw was ready to sprout new teeth. “You see.” The knife rose up, high over her. Even the humans were taller than her, but she was taller than Daosheng, than the silent Shedite behind her, and she stood in the front for a reason. “That wasn’t the right choice.”

The knife descended towards her, and Chaixin made it not so. The light and heat inside her, a boiling up of fog she’d thought left behind, wanted to burst out in every direction, and she would not let it.

She made the world different, by wishing for it to be so.

It was so easy.

The leader of the humans tried to run. Tried, and shrank, grew translucent, turned to nothing at all as Forces sloughed away. Other damned souls approached, the _idiots_ , and she took them apart. She didn’t even have to use her hands.

She wanted the world to change, and it did. For her. All she had to do was want it hard enough, and all around her they screamed and ran and fell apart. She was a fire in the darkness, a light on the water, she was vast and greater than her body in a way none of them could understand.

When there was no one left before her, she turned around to look at those who had come in with her. Couldn’t they _see_ it? The way she burned? The Shedite could. It cowered, pressed against a wall, as much of itself turned inward as it could. As if she might take it apart next.

She could. All she had to do was want it enough.

Daosheng looked up at her, and lifted a hand. (How had they lost each other’s hands, in that moment? Chaixin hadn’t meant to let go.) “That’s exactly it,” she said.

“What?” Chaixin asked, and her own voice sounded odd to her. Louder than before, and rougher. Different. The fire burning her throat and settling in her bones, oh, it wasn’t blazing anymore, but it lived inside her. Embers banked and ready to burst out again.

“What you picked,” Daosheng said. She held up both her hands now. “It’s perfect. I’ll do the same. I don’t think I’ll be very far behind, now.”

Chaixin wrapped her hands around her friend’s. Her own hands had changed. Dusky skin turned paler and redder, her fingers longer, her claws darker in turn. And she stood higher above her friend than before.

“I couldn’t let them hurt you,” Chaixin said. She wanted to ask, _Are you afraid now?_ She would never, ever ask that question.

“You never would,” Daosheng said. She laid her hands along Chaixin’s wrists. “Let’s keep going. Finding our way will be so much easier now that you can make a way for us.”


	7. Chapter 7

_Cold wind rises at the end of the sky,  
What thoughts occupy the gentleman's mind?  
What time will the wild goose come?  
The rivers and lakes are full of autumn's waters.  
Literature and worldly success are opposed,  
Demons exult in human failure.  
Talk together with the hated poet,  
Throw a poem into Miluo river._  
\-- Du Fu, “Thinking of Li Bai at the End of the Sky”

Naturally, there were guards at the door. Not the sort of enormous Djinn and Calabim that Chaixin and Daosheng were used to, in front of the rooms holding the rarest books, but a pair of demons only a little bigger than either of them. A skinny Impudite with an amiable smile, and a gold-patterned white Balseraph that coiled over the Impudite’s shoulder and around his waist.

“You’re sure you’re in the right place?” asked the Impudite. He sprawled across a heap of human-style treasures. Coins and cups and strings of pearls, chains fitted with gems and an ornate chair--a throne, more like--that he didn’t bother to sit on directly.

“We’re in the right place,” said Daosheng, because she had made the decision. And Chaixin nodded rapidly at her side, because she could not disagree.

“Like anyone needs more Calabim,” sighed the Balseraph. She slipped off the Impudite’s shoulders, and burrowed down into the heap of gold. “Call me,” she said, voice muffled by metal, “if something more interesting happens.”

“You may as well sit down,” said the Impudite, not unkindly. “My name’s Benjamin, and you can tell me if you need anything.” His gaze passed over the Geas that still sat at Daosheng’s neck, but didn’t linger there.

“Would you actually get us things, if we needed them?” Daosheng asked.

“It would depend on what you offered in return,” said Benjamin.

Chaixin sat down on the floor, cross-legged. “The only thing we need,” she said, “is to speak with your Prince.”

Daosheng sat down beside her. Neither of them paid much attention to the Shedite lurking at their back. Enki hadn’t spoken, except to answer questions, since Chaixin found her Band.

The Impudite put his chin in his hands, and watched the three of them together. “Do you want advice?” he asked.

“Yes,” Daosheng said, even as Chaixin said, “How much does it cost?”

Benjamin smiled, and said, “Don’t grovel. Tell the truth. Prove that you know what you’re in for.”

“But we don’t,” Daosheng said. “How could we know?”

“Maybe you’ll just have to guess.” Benjamin tilted his head to one side. “You’re in luck. The Boss will see you now.” He leapt to his feet, and shooed them towards the curtained doorway beyond his heap of treasure. “Don’t dawdle.”

As they walked through the doorway, he dug into the pile for his Balseraph again.

#

The Demon Prince of Theft picked up the Shedite first, one fist dug into its body so that the rest of it dangled below like a sack of wet imps. “Kid,” she said, “you’ve been missing for a while. Do you have a good explanation?”

The Shedite shivered in her grasp, and said nothing.

“She was lost,” Daosheng said. “In the land of Oblivion.” When the Prince’s eyes turned on her, she swallowed, and kept speaking. “She forgot who she was, or why, or anything except where home was. So we reminded her of why she ought to go back there.”

“Maybe I should be glad you remembered to pick up something while you were out,” said the Prince, light and sharp. She shook the Shedite in her grasp. “Not exactly mysterious long-lost artifacts, but it’s better than nothing, mm? Go think about what you’ve done.” She flung the Shedite away, into the shadows.

Chaixin could not stand any straighter or quieter or stiller than she already was. And so all she could do when the Prince’s gaze locked onto her was take her friend’s hand.

“You wanted an audience,” Valefor said. “Go for it.”

“We want to work for you,” Chaixin said. “We had--” There had been supplies, not intended for any Prince in particular, but merely a way to buy themselves access to one. Daosheng’s nudge reminded her of the advice. “We stole your Shedite back from Oblivion, which was trying to hold onto everything. And we stole ourselves. From Fate.”

“Did you,” said the Prince. She was standing before them, or maybe they were standing in front of her. The world around them was not amenable to their level of understanding.

Daosheng wondered what lay in the corners, and if they would see Enki again. Chaixin would have wondered if she could change space that way herself, when she was old enough and large enough, except that there was a Prince occupying all her sight and mind.

“We did,” Chaixin said. “We don’t have anything except ourselves to give you.”

“Everyone has to start somewhere.” Valefor tilted Daosheng’s chin back, and smiled at her with perfectly sharp teeth. “I have a slot for a Calabite with a pack of my kids downstairs. Fast and messy and dangerous. Do you want it?”

Daosheng trembled at his touch, but kept her eyes up. “Can we both go?”

“You have more guts than brains,” said the Prince, and let her go. “You don’t just _ask_ for presents, Daosheng. You earn them.” Valefor clapped Chaixin on the shoulder. “Explain it to her, would you? Or do you want the slot? Looks like it’s still open.”

“Only if we can both go,” Chaixin said.

“This will get you killed,” Valefor said. She tilted back her face, and laughed. The world shivered around them. “Could be fun to watch, though. You stole each other? I’ll accept the present.”

Their Prince dropped a Heart into Chaixin’s hands. It whistled, and scorched her palms.

“Wrong one,” Valefor said, and picked it up again, to deposit it in Daosheng’s hands. A second for Chaixin. “Go ask the doorman what to do next. I don’t want to see either of you again for a year and a day, at which point I expect some proof of concept. Got it?” The two Calabim in front of her nodded quickly. “Then get moving.”

The Demon Prince of Theft watched them disappear, and made plans.

They ran, the instant they were out of her sight. And they did the same.


End file.
